Hello, my LiveJournal. I'm, sorry, I've been neglecting you.

I've done all sorts of things since we last spoke: attended a music resources training day at the British Library; went back to London two weeks later when my brother rang to say that he'd booked a long weekend off but couldn't remember why and asked me if I wanted to do some galleries, so we did and I took the opportunity to join the BL (it was the day of that global warming demo.); been "supervising" an undergraduate library skills course (which also meant marking work which is officially really boring); downloaded about 100 relevant-seeming articles (as PDFs mainly) and made a full-text index of them with Swish-e [note to self: must do some reading!]; bought a flat and a sofa; and been told to amend all the glaring inaccuracies in the Music School's new CMS pages.

So, yesterday and today I attended the (compulsory) research students professional skills training course, "Transitions". It was quite good to meet some other PG researchers, especially those from different schools and faculties and some of the content was quite useful as well - things like fostering a good relationship with your supervisor, time management and productive networking. I think the course goes on over the years and includes things like presentation skills for conferences, lectures, etc. I know the postgraduate composers are very critical of this course and I feel compelled to join in when then complain about it, but I can't see that it was that bad, even if just for the opportunity to meet other postgraduates. Or maybe composers are much cleverer than me and don't need any professional skills...